This is my first Riley Sager novel, and it may not be my last. I chose to read Home Before Dark first because it is a story about a supposedly haunted house, and I love haunted house stories. I found this novel to be deliciously spooky (so spooky, that I kept telling myself that I really should stop reading spooky stories before I go to bed), but I was disappointed with the ending.
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I have to say that I am impressed with Catriona Ward. Here is another novel (the first being The Last House on Needless Street) that she is written where she has managed to surprise me with one of the story’s twists. I was not expecting the ending at all, which is always a pleasant surprise for me. Overall, Looking Glass Sound is a bang-up psychological thriller that I highly recommend if you like having your mind messed with.
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House of Leaves is a horror novel that was first published in 2000, but somehow I had never heard about it until recently. When I saw how absolutely bonkers the formatting of this book is, I knew I had to read it:
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I wanted to read Lone Women by Victor Lavalle as it is inspired by the women homesteaders who took advantage of the government’s offer of free land in the American mid-west to anyone who could turn the harsh, inhabitable landscape into a working farm. I love it when women are badass and prove that they can survive without men. Lone Women is also supposed to be a horror novel, and I like the horror genre, but I would say the horror in this novel is underwhelming. As compulsively readable as I found Lone Women to be, I did not find it to be very horrifying.
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I have never read anything by Grady Hendrix before, and I guess judging by How to Sell a Haunted House, he writes comic-horror novels. I bought How to Sell a Haunted House because I wanted something spooky to read, but this is not a scary novel. It is low-key terrifying, though, because of all the creepy dolls and puppets that populate the story. I still found it to be an interesting read as it is about how trauma can affect generations of a family.
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